


pray to your sun god

by pvwork



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Swearing, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:26:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1256179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pvwork/pseuds/pvwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tara goes to UCSD. It's not running away or escaping, but it's not coming home either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pray to your sun god

They call you a NorCal girl, and by God do you know better than to correct them, but the label never fits over your shoulders quite right (not like the heavy weight of his leather jacket sloping past you shoulders and drowning you in the smell of his cologne did). 

You, Tara Knowles, are a Charming girl, born and bred. 

When the fat ass crows come cawing and flapping down on your head from the high rooftops of York Hall, skimming their wing tips over the building housing the Super Computer, and hopping up and down the flat gray steps scattered all over Muir College, you are reminded that you can put the past behind you, but it's damn sure going to be breathing down your neck, bellowing at you with a smoke-roughened voice that you will _never know where you belong_.

You never go down to the beach, just a hop-skip away and a lovely distraction spring quarter when the sun is out, the sand is hot, and it's a blur of seal-sleek flanks pressed against colorful towels lined up to face the blinding blue sea. Charming was too inland for that shit; you don't know how to swim, and you refuse to even contemplate ever wearing a one-piece cut high enough to hide the ink splashed across your lower back. You can lie, but you won't hide. 

Tramp stamp, they would say. I'm an old lady, you would want to reply, but God that isn't right either. Nothing fits right on you except your XXL University of California San Diego sweatshirt you wear around like a uniform as you haunt the near empty halls of your dorm on the weekends. It's grounding you, reminding you where you are, look at these seven hundred miles between you and Hell. You grow paler and paler with only the light of your desk lamp to shine on your face as you pour over your chemistry textbooks and pray that you maintain your 4.0, keep on top of your schoolwork and your job, keep your scholarship. 

When your roommates are out, they are drinking and smoking. When they're in, sprawled on their respective beds, they are teasing you about your bookish ways. You think, you think they might want what's best for you, "get the full college experience" that's nothing more than a silly myth anyway, but you don't know how to say that you've had enough of that for a lifetime. When they talk about their latest crushes, flirting with the idea of a boy who will hold their books, take them on joy rides, kiss them in front of classrooms as a sugary sweet good-bye, you think about Jax's big hands fitted over your hips as he pressed sloppy kisses to your collarbone, the tops of your breasts, the tops of your thighs, and then the most intimate parts of you, his laugh and his wet cheeks as he regarded your no-doubt blissed out face after a job well done. You think about grabbing his hair and tangling those straw-fine strands between your fingers and egging him on with a heel at the small of his back and remember the machine-like snap of his hips, like a piston in a bike engine. You dream about the way he'd whisper your name like a prayer before he came, your name and God's in one breath. Blasphemous. And to all their light-hearted cajoling those first few weekends of fall quarter, when they think they might still have a chance at convincing you yet, all you do is you smile and say, "That that kind of stuff just isn't for me, you know?". You've got work to do, is all. 

There are boys who come up to you while you sit alone in Giesel, at Pines, in the common room of your dorm, to flirt and tell you about your awfully cute freckles and admire the shades of red the SoCal sun brings out in your hair, and tell you that you're horribly smart and would you terribly mind if they bought you a cup of coffee or something? 

And what you don't say, is that you have a man back home, because he's not really yours anymore for one thing, and you don't know where home is for another. They think you're a blushing virgin, pretty enough but inexperienced. You're wearing chunky reading glasses and baggy jeans (you stole off the floor just so you could have literal boyfriend jeans to wear to class one Monday your sophomore year of high school) and you look _vulnerable_. 

Don't they know that crows are carrion pickers?

You let them gasp at the ink spread from L2 to L5, curving the tips of its crow-black wings around each iliac crest, stretching across the expanse of your lower back like a (not a brand, not a mark) sign when you are laid out on their beds, impatiently waiting for them to do something with their fumbling hands and too wet tongues and dreadfully eager ways. Here she is. Charming. Demure. Brilliant. 

They tell you you they'd never have guessed someone like you would have something like _that_ and you think about smashing bottles in dark rooms, screaming at the moon like something wild; the roar of a bike between your thighs, your fingers hooked into Jax's belt loops; the smell of cigarettes and engine exhaust and leather and dust pungent in the air.

You think about your life with a brick wall between eras. Pre. Post. Before. After.

And you say: I am full of surprises. 

The sands of time smooth over the jagged edges of bad memories like sharp glass littering the insides of your brain space. The bitter taste of breaking the law for the first time fades. You think of him less and less, you forget what he was like, but you never forget the way he made you feel. First love is precious like that, but the quarters roll by, week by week you think less and less of him until it's summer and you are standing in front of a sub-leased apartment with cold keys in your hand and the sweet, sweet knowledge that you will never have to go back. 

So what if he's still there. You escaped. You were free as a fucking bird for a whole year and this is just the beginning. You promise yourself that you are gone for good. That the wind is your home, carrying you to places far and beautiful. The crows outside your window grow to become less ominous, less significant, less of a symbol. Just birds on the wing. 

It's all, quite literally, behind you now.


End file.
